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SEJ's 2010 Award Winners for Reporting on the Environment

October 15, 2010

The Society of Environmental Journalists' winners of the 2009-2010 Awards for Reporting on the Environment will be honored Oct. 13 at a gala in the University Center, University of Montana, Missoula, on the first day of SEJ's 20th annual conference.

SEJ's journalism contest is the world's largest and most comprehensive awards for journalism on environmental topics.

Twenty-nine entries in 11 categories were selected by a panel of distinguished judges, with two honorable mentions. The panel of reporters, editors and journalism educators pored over 216 entries to choose the finalists representing the best environmental reporting in print and on television, radio, the Internet and in student publications.

SEJ's Rachel Carson Environment Book Award winner receives $1,000 and a pair of marble bookends bearing the contest, book and author information. The student winner receives $250, a crystal trophy and up to $750 in travel assistance to the annual conference. Each of the other winning entries receives $1,000 and a crystal trophy.

Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, Print

First Place: Toxic Waters, The New York Times
Charles Duhigg
Charles Duhigg's groundbreaking and impactful look at America's drinking water is the unanimous choice among judges for the Carmody investigative print award. The length, scope, and revelations contained in the Toxic Waters investigation made an impressive contribution to the public debate on water use in the U.S.

Outstanding Beat Reporting, Print

First Place: The Seattle Times, Craig Allen Welch
Welch solidly reported on a wide range of topics, from the demise of local shellfish industries to conflict between wolves and ranchers, and deteriorating levees, with superb writing. Welch used a wide variety of voices to tell compelling local stories that tie into larger regional or global issues.

Outstanding Online Reporting

First Place: The Last Untamed River, Radio Free Asia, Minh-Ha Le
A memorable project that vividly depicted the dimensions of an environmental issue unfamiliar to many people. This visual voyage down the Mekong River from its source to its mouth brought to life a river ecosystem — make that ecosystems — of enormous complexity.

SEJ's Rachel Carson Environment Book Award

First Place: Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age ofPermanent Drought,Walker & Co, James G. Workman
Judges were impressed by this book's originality and ambitious approach. Heart of Dryness explains the global water crisis through the eyes of the Bushmen of Botswana, a group of persecuted people who have learned to survive in the Kalahari Desert and its longstanding drought.

Second Place: Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It, Island Press, Robert Glennon

Third Place:Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, University Press of Florida, Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite

Outstanding Beat/In-Depth Reporting, Radio

First Place: Architects Share Green Building Ideas, PRI's The World
Jason Margolis
This piece stood head and shoulders above the competition for the reporter's skill in taking a simple and increasingly familiar concept — greenhouse gas emissions — and helping the listener understand it in terms of the spaces so many of us inhabit during our workdays …The content was surprising, revealing and compelling, and the manner in which it was conveyed to the listener was masterful.

Outstanding Student Reporting

First Place: Powering a Nation: The Coal Story
Sara Peach, Jenn Hueting, Monica Ulmanu, Chris Carmichael (University of North Carolina)
Environmentalists argue that removing Appalachian mountaintops to mine coal is a disaster. For many who live in that hardscrabble area, it seems an economic necessity. Sara Peach and her student team from the University of North Carolina captured that basic division, and its many nuances, in a well-constructed series of interviews and images presented in a style that's dispassionate and non-judgmental and, largely because of that, makes clear how wrenching this issue is.

Honorable Mention: University of Montana Grace Case Project, Laura Lundquist (with a team of 31 students and three professors)

Outstanding Beat/In-Depth Reporting, Television

First Place: Climate Change Winners and Losers
CBS Evening News and CBS Sunday Morning
Ben Plesser and Mark Phillips
The judges were unanimous in awarding first prize in the "BEAT/IN-DEPTH TV" category to "Climate Change Winners and Losers." This two-part report was a superb example of what television does best: taking us to places and showing us what is happening with strong, clear images. There was obviously a lot of research that went into this story about the extreme edges of what's happening with climate change, but it didn't get in the way of the storytelling. The writing was crisp, precise and witty. The reporter's on-camera appearances were dramatic and engaging, from riding in the dog sled in Greenland to snorkelling in the Maldives and demonstrating by walking in the water what the consequences of rising sea levels could be.

Outstanding Small Market Reporting, Print

First Place: Green vs. Green: Environmentalists Duke It OutMonterey County Weekly, Kera Abraham
By examining conflicts in which both sides laid plausible claim to being champions of the environment, Abraham offered an unusually sophisticated and thought-provoking examination of what it means to be green. Her pieces were thoroughly reported, engagingly told, fresh and fair-minded.

Outstanding Story, Television, Small Market

First Place: Poison Water
WHIO-TV, Dayton, OH
Kathryn Burcham
The judges were impressed with the reporter's research and development of this strong, local story. She and her station demonstrated a commitment to a subject that other media outlets may have been tempted to overlook. Her tenacity is evident by the positive results that were achieved for the residents of Garden City. This story is not available electronically.

Outstanding Story, Television, Large Market

First Place: Seahorse Sleuths
KQED Quest, San Francisco, CA
Joan Johnson, Jenny Oh, Shirley Gutierrez, Kenji Yamamoto, Josh Rosen, Paul Rogers
A compelling piece about a strange and fascinating creature jeopardized by the global trade in dried seahorses. Beautiful images, combined with solid editing, made this entry stand out, as did the documenting of efforts by scientists and advocates to save the seahorse. This story was made exceptional by the power of great underwater video as well as undercover video from inside the markets where a startling number of seahorses are sold.